


Five Times Phil Coulson Made Clint Barton Feel A Lot Better (Not Like That) (Okay, Maybe Once Is Like That)

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint's self-image is pretty shitty, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Phil makes everything better, Pining Clint, get-together, no actual plot arc but also not so much with the porn, shut up I like sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3635130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as Clint is concerned, Coulson makes him feel better about pretty much anything, no matter how much of a chronic fuckup he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Phil Coulson Made Clint Barton Feel A Lot Better (Not Like That) (Okay, Maybe Once Is Like That)

**Author's Note:**

> So, to my great dislike I have yet another miserable cold and this generally brings me to a place of great appreciation for hurt-comfort/caretaking fics. Ergo.

**One.**

So, Clint doesn't really get why the guy in the suit is so pissed at the other guy for shooting him. Like, okay, _Clint's_ pissed, in a fuzzy kind of way because holy shit he is losing blood like a motherfucker and okay, it was going to happen eventually but he never expected there would be anyone _else_ mad about it when he died. But anyway, Suit Guy was holding a gun on him too, and obviously you never aim a gun you aren't prepared to shoot, so what the hell.

But the guy is muttering about sharpshooters his _ass_ and how hard is it to _not_ actually kill a guy you're hoping to recruit, even if you have to shoot him in the process, Jesus Christ Morris give me your fucking belt because if you can't manage a through and through from thirty feet _you_ can be the guy whose belt gets soaked in the mess.

And then he's making a tourniquet and Clint is busy trying to make sense of the word recruit and Morris looks like he seriously thinks Suit Guy is maybe going to kill him messily if Clint doesn't make it, and then damn it, there goes consciousness. 

He kind of wishes he was going to survive long enough to see if Morris is right about that.

But then, what the hell, he _wakes up_ , with Suit Guy's fingers in his leg sewing him up and there's a needle in his arm which he assumes is saline? And something that is improving his mood by a lot because everything is floaty and also having some dude's grubby fingers two knuckles deep in his thigh should seem a lot more worrying than it is.

It occurs to him that usually when someone is two knuckles deep in him, it's a whole other kind of happy feeling and goddamn if Suit Guy can make him feel this good with this one, they should totally go for the other one some time. Based on Morris and one of the other guys that is still name-free choking, and Suit Guy giving him some kind of look that maybe means he's funny and maybe means he's an idiot (? Maybe the reason these look the same is that the two states coincide a lot?), he figures there's about a 93% chance he said that out loud. Well, whatever, Suit Guy is hot.

Then he goes back to sleep. When he comes to again, the tube into his arm is running red blood, and wow, his leg feels like shiiiit but he feels like maybe dying isn't a definite thing for today, so, you know, score?

Then he looks at Suit Guy, and he has his sleeve rolled up and one of those stretchy wrap things around the elbow and Clint crinkles up his face and focuses on trying to output words on purpose. What he's trying to ask is, is this your blood? And maybe he succeeds, because Suit Guy shrugs. “O neg, and you were looking very transparent there for a bit. Less fun than fingers, I guess, though.”

Clint can't manage anything he's entirely sure is cogent, but he tries anyway, mumbling something about yeah but now they already exchanged fluids, so that's that out of the way.

Suit Guy nods and says that's true, but really this was not a pickup line. It's an IV line.

Clint decides all his previous crushes were seriously lacking, because he is definitely in love with Suit Guy. Maybe because morphine (is it morphine? Suit Guy nods and says and antibiotics and sometime in the next hour there will be an honest to god chopper here to extract them and damn it, why had they come after him in a fucking jungle), and Clint reaches out for him and snags his hand. “Thanks,” he says.

Suit Guy, and when he wakes up again for real Clint will curse himself for like an hour for not actually getting the guy's name because what if he can't find him? But then he'll find him and it will turn out okay, just says, “Welcome. To SHIELD, and for the blood.”

 

**Two.**

Clint has known for _years and years_ that he is a classic high-level fuckup, so that's not new, but goddammit, after the clusterfuck of his recruitment, and how oh yeah he's completely in love with his supervisor and that has not changed even without morphine and even with paperwork and even though everyone else seems to think the guy is a robot which is stupid because robots do not bleed blood that is compatible with punk-ass carnie mercenaries so there? He was really hoping for everyone else, and most in particular said supervisor, to not know it for a while yet.

But yeah, first real big-time mission and somewhere the intel was shit and and three guys went down because Clint couldn't explain what he was seeing fast enough, and he got all tangled up in words while he was shooting and that was not helpful because Hey I Shot Two Guys does not help anyone understand that they need to go up and in the window right the fuck now.

His whole fucking job is to be a sniper and to be their eyes, and now there are _three guys with new holes in them_ , and Clint is not even one of them because, yeah, he was up in a crane basket thingy and no one had a shot at him there. So yeah, unhelpful fuckup and super-protected in his position. Great.

He hunches down in his seat in the cafeteria and pushes his cheesy eggs back and forth with his toast because not eating when you have food is fucking _stupid_ , and that fits the theme and all but he isn't leaving until he can at least manage to choke down something but so far he can't and dammit, here comes Coulson.

(Who, in case this is unclear, is Suit Guy, the hot supervisor, the super-competent badass that fuels every fantasy Clint has these days. Crap.)

“Barton,” he says, sitting down. He looks at Clint's plate, and then looks at Clint and frowns. “Are you hurt?”

Which, okay, fair question because Clint sometimes isn't so eager to go to Medical? But fuck, let's review, _not hurt_. He shakes his head and picks up a bite and tries to put it in his mouth.

Coulson dunks his grilled cheese in his soup. “You did a good job today,” he says.

Clint gapes at him. “The fuck?”

Coulson stops with his dripping sandwich triangle half way to his mouth again. “What?”

“Half the guys are in Medical. I--”

“Kept every single bad guy from ever having a clean shot, took down four of them yourself while the rest of us collectively took out six, and managed to keep everyone moving the safest path?”

Clint blinks, and blinks again, and looks at the dripping soup, and looks at Coulson. “What?”

Coulson sets the sandwich down and lets it just get soggy for a minute. “Barton, did you think you had failed?”

“I. Yes? You kept having to stop because guys kept getting shot! And I didn't clear your path! And then you needed to go a different way and I didn't tell you in time!”

Coulson picks up the sandwich and takes the gooshy bite, then redips and takes the fresh one. He points the sandwich half, well now a quarter, whatever, at Clint. “If I thought you'd failed, I would have dumped a protein bar and coffee cup in your lap and put you to work on the incident report before you ever got something as nice as eggs.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Have you ever seen me not take paperwork seriously?”

“...No?”

“Eat your eggs. We do have paperwork, but it's the kind where we tear someone a new one for the intel fuckup, and also where I append your file with a commendation. It's the sort of thing you should do on a full stomach.” He watches until Clint puts a forkful of eggs in his mouth. “Good. Now, and this is us just shooting the shit while we eat. Off the record. What would you have needed to meet your own standards, which are clearly way higher than what we expect of you?”

Clint takes another forkful and thinks about it. “Um, I don't know?”

“Me either. It's as if there was nothing you could have done, or something. Keep eating.” Coulson dips his other sandwich half in the soup and waits for Clint to put his eggs in his mouth before he takes the bite.

 

**Three.**

Clint's expecting chicken soup when Coulson drags him to his apartment and manhandles him into a comfy chair with a fuzzy knit blanket thing that is three kinds of purple and a bright green stripe with black diamonds, which Clint loves immediately because he is 100% classy and his taste is impeccable, and says that Clint is fucking _sick_ and he should have some _soup_ like a _regular sick person_.

But then instead of opening a can of Campbell's with its greenish-yellow globs of sweaty-smelling chicken fat, and dumping it in a saucepan to heat, he turns the damn chair so Clint can see him puttering in his kitchen, and proceeds to make the soup. Out of vegetables and broth and stuff.

It looks like even the broth part is homemade. There's ginger all minced up in there, and Coulson adds black wild rice and garlic, and chunky carrots and some black beans (from a can, so apparently Coulson is not so totally perfect as to do the beans from dry as well), and leftover pulled chicken that he apparently keeps in the freezer for those occasions when he wants to whip up some soup. Actually, he has more than one kind because he asks Clint to start off whether he wants the chicken with a little kick or more herbal.

Jesus.

(Clint said kick, because why not and because he usually finds spicier things appealing when his head is gummed up)

He talks the whole time, too, asking Clint questions every once in a while but not hard ones, just enough to kind of involve him in the process, and it's obvious but Clint can't even manage to resent it because it turns out pneumonia sucks _ass_ and he is kind of wiped out from the effort of blinking which does not explain why he went to work today except that he's not very good at taking time off because what if they realize while he's gone that they're okay without him?

Or, okay, what if _Coulson_ realizes that?

Fine, so he's pathetic. 

Actually, he's so entirely pathetic that when Coulson saw him and dragged him down to Medical for a chest X-ray, which, okay yes, there was kind of a lot of breathing river-water last week, so it was basically reasonable to suspect, but ugh, Medical, he just went. Because Coulson said so and it seems that at this point he will do just about anything the man says.

By the time Coulson is squeezing half a lime over Clint's bowl (a lime? Really? But it smells _so_ good even through the mountains of snot in Clint's head and hey, vitamin C can't hurt?), and helping him to the table, Clint's just about totally exhausted from watching, and he maybe even nodded off a time or two, mostly during the dicing and 'wait for everything to meld together' stages, but he manages to get the spoon to his mouth and holy crap this is delicious. He wants to marry Phil on the strength of this soup. And the whole taking the afternoon off to make it for him and all, but damn, the soup makes a good case.

“Is this this good when I can taste right?” he asks.

Oh yeah, so that's pretty smooth.

But Coulson laughs. “I like it pretty well, but I mostly make it when I feel a cold coming on because chicken soup.”

“Everyone else goes with the red and white can. Or the blue one if they're feeling fancy enough for Progresso.”

“Nah.” Coulson smooths his hand over Clint's hair before he goes to sit on the other side of the table, and Clint wants him to come back but asking would be weird. “Homemade is better. Plus there's no lime in the canned stuff.”

“Good point.”

He figures he won't make it past half the bowl, but he manages to stay upright long enough to finish it all.

He also falls asleep more or less _as_ Coulson muscles him over to the couch, but it's on a full belly and with Coulson's very sturdy shoulder up against him, so that's okay.

 

**Four.**

Clint has been sitting on his living room couch (living room is probably too advanced a term, since his apartment is more one room that has burners at one end and a bed at the other, but there's a kind of stained and slightly torn-up couch for sprawling in front of the TV) trying to formulate a plan for almost two hours when there's a knock at the door.

Well, what else is he supposed to do with a vacation?

No seriously, someone in HR says he has never taken actual time off in the entire ten years he's worked for them, and yes, SHIELD agents are dedicated and stuff but everyone needs downtime, and so he is being required to take two weeks, preferably three, barring actual emergency that requires his particular skills.

Two weeks. Preferably three.

What the hell is he supposed to do with himself? Take up quilting? Mainline Days of Our Lives from 1985-present? Learn Urdu? Well, no, okay, learn _more_ Urdu; he has some basics, but sure, maybe more than a 200-word vocabulary might be useful? Except that's apparently _training_ and does not count as vacation, which he knows because he asked the HR lady what the shit to do, and this was one of the things he proposed.

But basically that's what he always does when he's down with an injury: watch the entire run of one or more TV shows, and/or acquire more language. Or that one time he burned through a bunch of physics and math classes solely so he could have the vocabulary to make that gigantic douchewaffle Ward confused. But being as useful as he can, that's how he earns his keep, and nothing is coming to mind that he both knows how to do without SHIELD resources, and is useful.

Anyway. Obviously he doesn't have to sit in the living room motionless the whole time; he could hit the gym or go for a walk or find someplace to shoot that is _not_ a SHIELD property, but the gaping hole in his upcoming calendar is unsettling and he's totally unmoored about it.

Which is fucking stupid, but this is _him_ , so.

At least answering the door is a prescribed and obvious choice.

Coulson is standing on the other side, in actual honest to fuck jeans, wearing the glasses he never has on in the field and a baseball cap, and he has a stack of tri-fold brochures in his hand.

“Uh. Hi?” Clint says. “Please tell me you're here with one of those emergencies that will mean I can just go back to work?”

“No such luck,” Coulson says. “But, HR tells me you are the other agent being sent for mandatory downtime, so I thought, you know, maybe we could, if you don't have plans of your own already, pick a place and go be bad at vacations together? If you want.”

Clint stares at him for a minute, because 1. _yes_ he will go on a vacation Coulson plans and 2. What? Why didn't they say so and 3. Coulson seems kind of weirdly nervous that Clint won't want to go with which is stupid because see point 1. Also, 4. _hell yes_ if Coulson will be there Clint will go. 

He's still kind of pathetic about this. Also, chickenshit because as has been pointed out to him very recently it's been ten _years_ now. 

Maybe he should answer the question. He never has trouble talking to Coulson over the comms, but now he feels all blushy and weird. God. “Um, no.” Coulson's face goes blank, and Clint hurries on. “I mean, no, I don't have plans. I mean, I don't know how to have plans. I've been kind of everywhere...” Clint gestures this spinnywave thing to cover 'places I have been in a circus or on a mission or both' and shrugs. “But never just because.”

Coulson stops looking all blank and holds up the brochures. “I picked five because more seemed overwhelming.”

“Five might be overwhelming,” Clint says, but he takes them. “Disneyworld?”

“Sure, why not? I mean, isn't that the peak of vacationing American normality?”

“I have no idea.” Clint flips to the next one. “California wine country? Would I have to drink wine?”

“So that's a no? Down to four. See, this is doable!”

“Grand Canyon? Ooh, wait, does that mean, like, base-jumping?”

“Annnd down to three.”

“What? Why?”

“I have to watch you jump often enough, Barton. Doing it for fun would be... not fun.”

Clint shrugs. “Mount Rushmore? Can't we just, like, flip through a pile of cash money for the same effect?”

“So, Disney it is?”

“Or...” Clint looks at the last brochure in his hand. “Or Dollywood? Um, yeah, Disney.”

“See? That was easy!” Coulson smiles a little, and Clint steps a little closer. 

Not that much closer; he's still chickenshit so he sticks out his hand to shake on it. 

“Um. What do people wear to Disneyworld?”

“I think flip flops and fanny packs feature heavily.”

Clint does a double-take because he can barely handle Coulson in jeans, but Coulson is smirking, and he adds, “Or we could just go the way we are. My bank account says I can buy whatever I need while I'm there. Sixteen years of no vacation, and all.”

Clint nods because okay, yes, he has the same situation, not that he leaves his money all in the bank because he isn't stupid enough not to have boltholes with cash and supplies all over by now, and grabs his wallet. “Now? Wait, how'd _you_ get away with _sixteen_ years?”

Coulson laughs. “I'm a sneaky son of a bitch.”

Well, that's true. 

Also, it doesn't matter, because if they'd made him go every ten years he would still have four to go before he was due, and that wouldn't work for Clint, so. They head for the street and grab a cab to the airport with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and Clint thinking maybe vacation isn't _such_ a terrible idea.

 

**Five.**

It's been 54 days (but who's counting) since Clint killed Coulson. No, okay, the SHIELD shrinks are 'encouraging' him to think of it as having been brainwashed by a god to lead an attack during which Coulson was killed, but Clint feels like that's too passive a description to encompass his role.

When he gets the text, he's on a work crew cleaning up the block where they finally have all the pieces of the space whale thing cleared away (long-ass process, involving a ton of tech folks and the radiation guys and oh hey the bio and xenobio and astrotech squads and just about everyone checking everything _in situ_ nine ways to Sunday before anything could be moved, and then a ton of dudes with cranes and demo equipment taking it apart, and now it's cleanup before they can start building again). It's what he _does_ , now.

Because, what, he was going to take another vacation during his involuntary downtime while SHIELD figures out what to do with him? He has a picture from the first vacation, the Disney one, on his fridge, and he basically feels like throwing up every time he looks at it (or at a lime, or at anyone in thick dorky glasses, or, and emergency services has a surprising number of these, ugly knitted blankets), but he has a lot to make up for and also no idea how to do anything but just keep on keeping on, choking down MREs a couple times a day and lying down every night as though sleeping without gasping screaming nightmares might be a thing ever again.

It all leaves a lot to be desired, actually, since okay, he's miles from having a good day, so it's hard to know whether it's that before it was thirty miles and he's improved to twenty-nine, but anyway, he doesn't feel any better, but the other choice is to stop and he just... he can't. Coulson would have hated that, so.

The text is from an unknown number, which is fucking weird because like eight (living) people have this number, but it's obviously intended for him because it says Barton.

Actually, it says, Barton and then a room number and address. Which, what?

Maybe one of the survivors of his assault on the bridge wants to lure him somewhere and shank him, but then, it's not like any of them couldn't just do that when he reports in for his psych sessions; no one would blame them, right? Or they could all alibi each other or something.

Anyway, so whatever, he's just going to ignore it.

Except then he gets another text that says his eyes are needed, same address and room number, and well hell. His eyes are, actually, a little bit special, so fine. He finishes scooping up one more sidewalk-square's worth of rubble and takes his shovel and wheelbarrow back to the distribution point, then dusts off his hands and texts back, _on my way._

Hey, if it's someone trying to kill him they'll be watching for him anyway, so it hardly matters if he says he's coming.

Although, he does arrive by way of going in the front door, which is entirely not his game so if they're watching the roofs and fire escapes, well.

The place is some kind of residential care facility, and it smells like industrial soap and bleach. He makes his way up the stairs to 904, and stands outside, listening.

He doesn't hear anyone in there—machines, beeping, breathing, whatever, but no voices, nothing that says anyone is upright—so he gathers himself and opens the door.

Coulson smiles at him, a weak little quirk of the lip, and reaches toward him, beckoning with the arm that isn't strapped to a board and taking on various drips and drugs through a couple of ports.

Clint, because he does anything and everything Coulson tells him to, goes. He considers hesitating a couple of feet away—it's a trick, right? This is an LMD and this is a psych test? Or something? But... fuck it. Coulson is smiling at him and he wasn't going to ever see him again and he's reaching, and so he just goes forward and when he gets there he takes Coulson's hand, which is warm but which grips weakly, which has the callouses Clint knows from the times Coulson has set a hand on his arm in the field, or smoothed down his hair while he was feeding him soup, or... or from the hundreds of times Clint has watched him field-strip a weapon, write a crisp report, poke at a phone, or shove noodles in his mouth with chopsticks.

If he's a clone, he's perfect, and Clint just keeps going, crawling up on the bed with him and carefully, because Jesus, cannot cannot _cannot_ hurt him again, arranges himself to curl up around him.

“Hey,” Coulson says, his voice a rough whisper. “Sorry, vent just came out this morning.”

“What?” Clint noses against his shoulder and he smells like Coulson and all at once Clint is feeling the exhaustion and maybe here, maybe now, he can sleep.

“Couldn't con the nurse into texting you until I had a voice,” Coulson says. “And I needed you.”

“Anything,” Clint says. He closes his eyes and breathes Coulson air and feels something unwind. And he can sleep later, because right now? “What do you need?”

“Just this,” Coulson says. “Just you.”

Clint's eyes come open to stare, but Coulson is just looking at him, calm, pale, obviously injured, and still intense and alert and he means it.

So Clint nods. “Long as you'll have me, Sir.”

Coulson brings up his hand, awkward in this position, to pat Clint gently, and goes back to sleep, so Clint does, too.

 

**Okay, all right, And the One.**

“I was right,” Clint says. 

“Hmm?” Phil drops another warm kiss on Clint's sweaty-damp belly and looks up.

“That was _way_ better than two knuckles deep in my _leg_ ,” Clint says. 

“Oh?” He strokes lazily along Clint's flank and down his leg. “But there's still room for improvement?”

“Dunno, what do you think?” Clint squirms over onto his side and makes grabby hands for Phil to come up next to him. “Get up here, my turn.”

“I think I'd hate to quit striving for better,” Phil says, chuckling as he crawls forward and brings them face to face, dragging his cockhead along Clint's thigh. “Worst case, a couple thousand more orgasms, so what's not to like?”

Clint reaches between them and gives Phil's dick a little squeeze and a stroke. “Oh, I think we can do better than a couple thousand. That's one a day for like six years, and I plan to keep you forever.”

“Works for me.”


End file.
